‘Seinfeld’ Close To Streaming Video Deal

Seinfeld is looking to follow in the footsteps of former Must See TV companion Friends with a rich SVOD deal. Sony Pictures TV, which is distributing Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s classic sitcom, has taken the show’s 180 episodes to streaming services. The company is expected to evaluate the bids in the network couple of weeks. The pending streaming deal for Seinfeld, first reported by WSJ, is expected to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in addition to the tens of millions a year the company still collects from the series’ syndication run, now in its fifth cycle.

As evidenced by the Netflix deal for Friends, the new digital services bring yet another revenue stream to what already has been arguably the most lucrative property on television, a hugely successful multi-camera sitcom that ran from 1989-98 on NBC.

Fox is NEVER going to let The Simpsons go anywhere but to their properties ever.

Anonymous • on Mar 14, 2015 7:40 pm

Oh please just put it on YouTube
with ads running every 7 min/break.
We ll watch the ads.
I’d rather watch ads than pay a fee and then get bored after a month of one show and cancel. Why isn’t EVERYTHING ON YOUTUBE
WITH ADS RUNNING at every break/.

Anonymous • on Mar 14, 2015 7:45 pm

What the heck is the difference if it’s on tv with ads or if it’s in YouTube with ads.
None. We can watch it more often and when we have time. Just run it w fn ads on YouTube.
Shhhhheessshh
is this process going to take another ten years.
As soon as YouTube came out it could have
been placed there. Ten years ago. Omg.
Sell ads in tv????
Sell ads on YouTube during the show????
Same thing.
It airs on network it airs on YouTube
same thing.

mike I • on Mar 13, 2015 9:12 pm

I am surprised Sony wouldn’t use their own service Crackle for this. it would certainly raise the visibility of that service.

Joe The Policeman • on Mar 13, 2015 9:59 pm

Sony wants a deal that’s pure profit, rather than just moving money from one part of the company to the next. The FXX deal for the Simpsons was to help the fledgling network get awareness, which would help the network in the long run.

Nina D. • on Mar 13, 2015 11:43 pm

Seinfeld’s been on Crackle for years but only 10 eps at a time and only in a small-framed SD version (with a ton of commercials).

Sony is one of those old-media dinosaurs with too many vested interests to please to really compete in streaming with unencumbered Netflix and Amazon. Hulu is also suffering from encumbrances.

Nobody is producing the next logical step in streaming, namely: a truly free, ad-supported service with a decent library. Nobody in the audience cares or even knows what studio a show comes from so this service will need to license content broadly, like Netflix and Amazon do.

Hulu or Crackle really should have that service, but at this point my money is on Amazon to get there first. And when the dinosaurs go belly up, you’ll know they committed suicide from short-sightedness and cowardice.

1now • on Mar 13, 2015 10:37 pm

Hopefully either Netflix or Amazon Prime gets this and makes it commercial free.

Anonymous • on Mar 14, 2015 6:12 pm

When you hear these getting richer stories
how bout doing something that would benefit
society that made it successful instead of hoarding it in greed.
Oh wait I need to be driving in a new rolls Royce
white phantom to the supermarket.

Maybe nobody is watching Friends and Netflix learned their lesson about licensing old shows – don’t pay top dollar because they don’t really help you that much. Netflix and Amazon are still in the shooting-in-the-dark phase of figuring this out. As a Netflix subscriber, I’d rather see them spend money on developing new shows, not some old show that everyone’s already seen.

Brolitico • on Mar 14, 2015 11:56 am

Might be a small sample size here, but there are tons of people on my feed apparently watching “Friends.” I’m wondering why Netflix doesn’t reveal viewership numbers. It’d be interesting to see, for instance, how many people have streamed each episode of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” or “House of Cards.”

Schadenfreude • on Mar 14, 2015 8:45 am

Netflix probably ended up getting burned by the Friends deal so they passed on Seinfeld, you never know.

Anonymous • on Mar 14, 2015 12:19 am

Studios continue to dig their own graves. At least Sony doesn’t have a network.

I wonder how Seinfeld would do on an audio only channel. Certainty, new viewers would miss the visual, but it might be interesting to just listen to the re-run … conjuring up memories. In today’s busy times, I have more time for listening (walking, driving, even swimming) than for looking. Of course, in some episodes, the audio would be full of continuous laugh tracks which might have to be toned down. Just wondering….

wendy • on Mar 14, 2015 6:57 am

I would subscribe to Hulu if they dropped ads for shows not from the current season of a show. I understand the reasoning for content from last week but its absurd to charge me a subscription fee and then show ads when I watch a show from ’95. Any ad revenue they get from that would be way less than the money from new subscribers. Binge watching is painful on Hulu.

Someone needs to own streaming, or make it iTunes-easy. Downloading The Interview showed how hard the process can be, even for hyper-connected users.

Keller • on Mar 14, 2015 7:55 pm

This is so stupid. I watch FREE reruns of Seinfeld, Friends, etc., on my FREE HD TV with the antenna on top of my house. Why would anyone pay for OLD, WORN OUT, reruns. “Cord cutters” are just ignorant. These jerks will be paying for reruns of all of the ‘vampire TV shows’ ……..just cuz.

Sorry, these assholes would hav to PAY ME to watch their crappy shows.

SUJ • on Mar 15, 2015 1:00 am

People need to get over “Seinfeld.” It’s so yesterday. Stop living in the past.

Schadenfreude • on Mar 16, 2015 12:36 am

“You’re living in the PAST, man! You’re hung up on a clown from the SIXTIES, man!” — Eric the Clown, “Seinfeld”